The Berlin Philharmonic Octet is one among several chamber ensembles that is based out of the
Berlin Philharmonic, although it is among the most prominent, widely traveled, and enduring of such groups. This Eterna Collection issue, Das Berliner Oktett spielt Werke von Conradin Kreutzer und Franz Berwald, was recorded in 1979 and first released on an LP in 1981; this is its second time around on CD. This particular edition of the ensemble was good; made up of relatively young players, the five strings and three woodwind players achieve a nicely blended sound and have plenty of energy in fast-paced sections, such as in the Allegro con spirito of the Berwald. The liner notes haven't been updated, which makes for a rather amusing contrast with more than two decades' distance; according to them, Kreutzer is remembered only for his opera Das Nachtlager von Granada and Berwald for only two of his four symphonies. You wonder what the note author was thinking; even in 1979, Conradin Kreutzer (not the "Kreutzer" who was the dedicatee of Beethoven's famous violin sonata) was noted above all for his lieder and choruses for male voices, and then the Septet in E flat, Op. 62, recorded here! Since the 1970s, a wide range of Kreutzer's music for chamber combinations, barely mentioning a summary in Grove's, has become available in print form, whereas there remains little hope for even a small-scale revival of Kreutzer's operas.
Likewise, the chance that any of Berwald's operas will return to the stage is seriously unlikely; most of them weren't even staged a first time. However, the overtures to those operas have all been recorded, some multiple times, and several have become reasonably well known, along with a great deal of Berwald's other music. This appears to be the only combination on disc of these works, and they are mutually complementary -- both take their instrumentation from Beethoven's Septet, Op. 20, both lie stylistically quite outside the Biedermeier aesthetic current in Germany at the time and both were written within the decade of the 1820s. Of the two, the Berwald, definitely eccentric for its time and filled with exploratory, lushly Romantic harmonies, is easier to connect with for twenty first century listeners than the Kreutzer, which hews more closely to its model and sort of straddles the bridge between classic and romantic. However, these are both very strong pieces and together illustrate the passageway between the two eras, and the performances are exceptionally fine; horn players will admire Christian-Friedrich Dallmann's handling of fast staccato notes in Berwald's Allegro con spirito, as well.